Ijust read Peter Rollins post on Evangelism. He believes Evangelism can change the world, but his idea of Evangelism is contrary to what most may think. At his community in Ireland, Ikon, they developed an experimental group called ‘The Evangelism Project.” Essentially what they did was go around and allow themselves to be Evangelized by various religious and political groups. The goal for them was not to ‘reform the other’ but to allow the other to reform them. The idea behind this activity is actually an attempt to view the world from the ‘others’ point of view. To gaze through anothers eyes in an attempt to uncover the faults and shadows in their own lives and culture.
Rollins uses the example of the Amish to illustrate his point:

Let us take a religious example. A movement in the Western world that continues to exist in a different way to the dominant values of society is the Amish community. Instead of looking at that community and either romanticizing them or ridiculing them an interesting experiment would be to ask a different question. Namely, what do those within the Amish community see when they look at the society around them. In short, what do they think when they look at us?

When we ask this question we may, for instance, begin to discern a shadow side to aspects of our society that we previously assumed to be good. We may begin to perceive problems with our increasing attachment to social media, or our abstraction from an organic sense of time (the passing of seasons etc.), or with how we treat our elders once they are too old to have independence (putting them in institutions) etc. etc.

I think this is a practice of extreme importance that can be practiced in our everyday lives, and really does have the potential to change the world. By attempting to disconnect and step outside of our own world and enter into the world of the “other,” we can truly begin to approach empathetic action. By trying to see the good in the other, then asking ‘what good does the other see in me?’ I think possible to see the world a little more like God does.

As I finished reading the post it got me thinking of the lyrics at the end of the mewithoutYou song Cattail Down.

“you don’t know where you came from,
you don’t know where you’re going,
you think you’re you-
you don’t know who you are,
you’re not you.
you’re everyone else.”

Tags:ChristianityEvagelismmewithoutYouPeter Rollins